Press-fit contacts which are press-fitted into passageways of a circuit board are known in the art. Japanese Patent Application No. 2010-160898A (“JP 2010-160898A”) for instance discloses such a press-fit contact in FIG. 5. In FIG. 5, the press-fit contact which has been press-fitted into the passageway is electrically connected with a wiring layer embedded in the circuit board. However, a distal end portion of a press-fitted portion of the press-fit contact reaches a depth deeper than the depth of the wiring layer where the passageway is electrically conductive. When this structure is used for a high-speed signal transmission, reflection of a signal occurs at a portion of the press-fit contact which has been plugged up to a position deeper than the wiring layer, which results in disturbance of the signal. Therefore, when the passageway is longer than the wiring layer or the press-fit contact has been plugged up to a position deeper than the wiring layer, a quality of a high-speed transmission signal is lowered.
To counteract this problem, in JP 2010-160898A, the press-fit contact is created by insert-molding an electrical conductor with an insulator to the correct length. However, insert-molding results in increased manufacturing costs. A portion of the press-fit contact can also simply be shortened to address this problem. As shown in JP 2010-160898A, the portion of the contact to be press-fitted has a certain shorter length, however, this results in decreased tolerance in the positioning of the press-fit contact. When the length of the press-fit contact to be inserted into the passageway is extremely short, such as 0.4 mm or the like, the tolerance becomes severe, which results in difficulty in locating the press-fit portion in the passageway with a high degree of accuracy.